Publishing Partner Guide to DOIs
From MPublishing
MPublishing is a member of CrossRef, which allows us to create Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for our publications. A DOI is a stable identifier assigned to a work that redirects viewers to the URL of the definitive version of that work online. Members of CrossRef register a DOI for each work that they publish. In addition, members are required to link to each other's works using DOIs. That is, if an article published by a CrossRef member makes reference to any work that also has a DOI, that DOI must be included in the article's bibliographic references. This can make citation trails easier to follow. So, MPublishing potentially engages with DOIs in two ways:
- A: MPublishing creates a new DOI for each article published online
- B: MPublishing checks to see whether a DOI exists for each bibliographic reference in an article and inserts DOIs where they exist (if they have not yet been supplied by the author or editor).
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Journals
CrossRef members are required to do both A and B for journal articles. For journals that offer a downloadable PDF of their articles, DOIs must be inserted in the PDF at the point of typesetting. In cases where MPublishing does the typesetting for a publication, MPublishing staff will insert these DOIs into the PDFs. However, in cases where a publishing partner handles typesetting for a PDF version themselves, we require that the publishing partner insert these DOIs before delivering the PDFs to MPublishing. This applies to all publishing partner that have agreed to allow MPublishing to create DOIs for their works, for all PDFs of journal content published since May 2011 (when MPublishing joined CrossRef). The recommended approach for inserting these DOIs in PDFs will very depending on the publication, as described below.
If the journal is made available online as soon as possible
We recommend that the person creating the PDF insert the article's DOI (the DOI generated by A, above) into the article, either on the first page or in a running header or footer. At the point of typesetting, this DOI will not yet be live. Registering new DOIs is part of the MPublishing release process. However, we can predict what the DOI will be for each article. MPublishing DOIs have the form:
http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/<collid>.<idno>
where <collid> is whatever appears after c= in URLs for your publication and <idno> is whatever appears after idno= when viewing a particular article. For example, for the journal Philosophy & Theory in Biology, a typical article URL is http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ptb;view=text;rgn=main;idno=6959004.0004.003. The <collid> for this journal is "ptb." Except in rare cases, the <collid> will be the same across your entire publication, while each article will have a unique <idno>. Your contact at MPublishing can help you determine what the value of <idno> will be for a future issue or volume of your publication.
In addition, we recommend that the typeset PDF include the DOIs for all references where they exist (as described in B, above) directly in the text. The full DOI should be displayed, and in the version of the PDF to be distributed online, should be a clickable link. Displaying the full DOI (rather than simply linking the title of the reference, for example) ensures that if the PDF is printed out, readers will still be able to use the DOI to locate the web version of the article. In order to insert the DOIs, the publishing partner should check each bibliograhic reference against the CrossRef database using the Simple Text Query form provided by CrossRef or the Guest Query form.
If the journal is made available only after an "embargo period" (a delay for the free online version)
We recommend against inserting a DOI for the article (Type A) since that DOI will not function during the embargo period.
In addition, we recommend that the typeset version include the Type B DOIs directly in the text (preferably as clickable links in the PDF version published online). This ensures that the print version includes all of the information included in the web version of the article. In order to insert the DOIs, the publishing partner should check each bibliograhic reference against the CrossRef database using the Simple Text Query form provided by CrossRef or the Guest Query form.
Monographs and other non-journal content
For monographs and other non-journal content, CrossRef currently allows members to do A, as described above. Although MPublishing will register a DOI for your monograph, there is no convention for inserting DOIs into PDF versions of monographs, so we do not do this in typesetting and do not recommend that you do it if you do your own typesetting.
CrossRef does not require B (as described above) for monographs, so you are not required to insert DOIs in bibliographic references. However, we encourage you to check each bibliograhic reference against the CrossRef database using the Simple Text Query form provided by CrossRef or the Guest Query form and insert them when applicable. Doing so makes it easier for readers to find source online.
